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As an owner of a website or a publisher of content on the Web, you are no doubt interested in the bigchanges Microsoft has implemented with the newly released version of its search engine, dubbed Bing.There are a great number of innovative changes in how searchers access search content in the Bing index,and as a result, on your website. This white paper was written for you, the folks whose content populatesthe Bing index. You’ll want to know what Bing is, what changes in Bing pertain to you, and how to makethe most of those changes so you get more eyeballs on your website’s content. Let’s get right to it.What is Bing?Bing is a new search engine from Microsoft. It crawls, analyzes, and indexes billions upon billions ofwebpages and other Internet content and relates all of that to keywords and phrases used by searchers(the principal way end users access the content of a search engine index). But in broader terms, Bing isreally a decision engine—a faster way to make more informed choices.According to Pew Research, people are relying more and more on Internet search. In fact, approximately50 percent of web users use search every day and search is second only to e-mail in daily tasks performedby web users. These search page views span everything from shopping, travel, entertainment, research,work, local, socializing, sharing, and more. The enormous quantity of content on the Internet can makesorting through a huge, resulting list of relevant results difficult and frustrating for the searcher.As a result of this continuous user engagement with search, Microsoft actively took on the challenge ofimproving user web search scenarios. Bing brings a new way of thinking to using SERPs, which has shownto demonstrably improve the satisfaction of searchers in finding the answers to their questions, often farfaster and more easily than in the past.Why make changes?Multiple, independent studies on how searchers read and use SERPs have demonstrated a consistentpattern. Microsofts own research and studies replicated these findings. Researchers have named thispattern the Golden Triangle. In essence, in a SERP containing a single-threaded list of relevant results fora query, searchers typically scanned the length of first result across the length of the SERP. They thenscanned a lesser amount of information for result #2 and continued in this ever-reducing pattern untilthey mostly stopped scanning at all around result #5. This Golden Triangle eye tracking and movementpattern is evident in a sample SERP from a Live Search usability study conducted in fall, 2008.Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters 3

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Figure 1. Sample of the Golden Triangle eye-tracking pattern on a SERPThe studies also noted that searchers often change their initial queries with new or modified keywords. Infact, only one query in four is successful. Over 50 percent of the time searchers refine their query, goback to the SERP from a non-helpful result, or abandon search altogether. The Bing design teamconsidered how to work with these consistent patterns of behavior to help search users become moreproductive in their queries.As a result of these changes, search engine optimization (SEO) will become even more important for youas your website is presented in the new Bing interface design.The new SERP with BingResearch showed that for 86 percent of respondents, organizing results on the SERP to help searchers findwhat they were looking for was the most important feature of a search engine. Working with this data, theBing design team made two big changes to their SERP:1. They created multiple sets of search results related to the searcher’s original search and organized them in such a fashion that they would be easy to scan and click. When the data is available in the index, they created categorized subsets of related results based on search log data from past, anonymous user searches using the new query’s keyword(s). The Bing design team calls these pages categorized results pages.Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters 4

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2. They designed Bing to present the most frequently used category data as entries in the upper left part of the Explore Pane—the left hand navigation pane on the SERP. These categorized results are presented in Quick Tab format, enabling one-click refinements.The Explore PaneThe Bing team noted that the vast majority of searchers completed their search using one of the top fiveorganic listings. By focusing searchers on the top ranked organic listings in a variety of categories relatedto the keyword used in the query, the new Bing interface presents many different but related types ofcontent, which offers a much more compelling and comprehensive search experience. This also givessearchers visibility to the content of many more web publishers for the same keywords simultaneously(many more than would have been presented in a single-threaded SERP).The Explore Pane is the consistent experience throughout Bing to enable searchers to do more with theirsearch results in a fast and authoritative way, whether it’s refining it into a category, expanding the querywith related searches, refining an image, travel, or shopping query, or managing search history. Like theMicrosoft Office 2007 Ribbon, it highlights many of the powerful features that make Bing search unique.Let’s examine the elements of the Explore Pane.Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters 5

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Quick TabsBecause so many initial user search queries required refinement, Quick Tabs attempt to anticipate thesearcher’s intent and proactively provide them with the most commonly sought-after results at whichpast, similar searches ended up. The Bing team designed the new Explore Pane to help searchers moreeasily navigate through the SERP by intuitively narrowing their search results, enabling them to morequickly to find the information they seek. The Explore Pane will reduce the time needed to reach theinformation searchers intend to find.To make the Quick Tabs data immediately available, the new Bing SERP now shows the top ranking resultsfor each of those Quick Tabs items as categorized results in the SERP, just after the initial list of the topfive organic results for the query. Links beneath each group allow the searcher to explore those lists ofresults in detail, should they choose to, with just one click.Bing develops lists of similar, related queries that searchers are likely to be interested in based on theresults of past, anonymous user intent. Bing then ranks those lists based on the relevance to the initialquery, and shows the top categories at the top of the Explore Pane as Quick Tabs. The function of QuickTabs is to enable the searcher to narrow down their initial query into a likely desirable and intended,deeper level of specificity in just one click.In Bing, only about 20 percent of all search topics will present Quick Tabs. Microsoft focused the work ondeveloping related, categorized lists on the most commonly searched topics so that they add value tothose queries. See an example of a common search where Bing shows Quick Tabs by searching on theterm ―Chicago‖. Bing makes a best effort guess on the searcher’s primary intent — the dominant sense —of an ambiguous keyword (in the case of the term ―Chicago,‖ the city is the dominant sense) based onanonymous past user searches. It algorithmically generates the most likely desired categories list, andthen populates the Quick Tabs with content related to that dominant sense.Figure 3. Sample Quick Tabs list for a query on ―Chicago‖But what about ambiguous keywords where the searcher’s intent is far from clear? The Bing team alsocreated a Related Searches list that represents yet another content filter for keywords.For example, if the user searches on the word ―Chicago‖, Microsoft’s anonymous search log data revealsthat the most dominant sense of the word relates to the city. Yet there are still those who are looking forinformation about the band, the Broadway musical, or the movie of the same name. Related Searchescovers those sorts of contingencies and more.While searchers explore the contents of various categorized results from the Quick Tabs, the original QuickTabs list remains in view so that the searcher can fully explore their subject without losing track of theirBing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters 7

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initial query. Lastly, in case the searcher wanders off into the woods in their explorations, there is also aSearch History list in the Explore Pane containing links to the last five queries browsed.The source of Quick Tabs content isn’t limited to a single domain for its results – it is a categorizedcollection of extended SERP data based on the keyword used for the query. Quick Tabs often includevertical content (collections of like-media types, such as images, videos, and more) in addition to relatedwebpage links. Quick Tabs can be useful for web publishers as they allow them to see what past searcherintentions were for a keyword query relevant to their website’s content.Related SearchesWhereas Quick Tabs are based on Bing’s determination of user intent derived from anonymous datacollected from past searches, the Related Searches list is different in that it is just that, a list of commonsearches related to the parent query. Related Searches is a list of looser definitions for broadening thescope of the parent query, whereas Quick Tabs, which are based on Bing’s analysis on common customerintent, refines the query to a narrower subset of content. Quick Tabs and Related Searches mayoccasionally appear to parallel each other, but they most often point to very different sets of content.Figure 4. Sample of Related Searches for the term ―Chicago‖The Related Searches list appears independently of whether or not there is a Quick Tabs list, and it isn’talways present (very specific queries with multiple keywords and phrases can be so focused that theremay be no Related Searches content to display). If a Quick Tabs list is present, the Related Searches listappears just below it in the Explore Pane. Otherwise, Related Searches appears at the top of the ExplorePane.Search HistorySearch History gives you one-click access to your previous queries made in a session. Studies revealedthat typical searchers repeated 24 percent of queries in a browser session, so making this data readilyavailable will help searchers return to websites that are of interest to them.The Search History list by default always appears in the Explore Pane, underneath the Quick Tabs andRelated Searches lists (when Bing shows them for a particular query). By default, searchers see the lastfive queries they made. Searchers also have the option of seeing links to all of their past queries for thatsession (click See all), clearing out the history list (click Clear all), or disabling the Search History list(click Turn off).Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters 8

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Note that clicking a Related Searches link is equivalent to running a new query, and doing so adds a newentry to the Search History list. Clicking a Quick Tab, on the other hand, which takes you to a categorizedresults list in the SERP, doesn’t affect the Search History list.Figure 5. Sample of Search History generated by using Related Searches to refine an initial query of―Chicago‖Categorized resultsEach Quick Tab entry corresponds to a categorized results list in the main pane of the Bing SERP. Forexample, when we earlier searched on the term ―Chicago,‖ we got the Quick Tabs list as shown in Figure3. When we clicked on any of the Quick Tabs items, Bing took us to the corresponding categorized resultslist in the SERP.As shown in Figure 2, the top five organic results are at the top of the SERP, followed by the collection ofcategorized results lists typically showing the top three results in each as defined in the Quick Tabs. Whenthere is duplication of result items between the initial, organic list and a categorized results list, Bingremoves the duplicates from the categorized results list, thereby exposing fresh, related websites andcontent.Bing doesn’t create categorized results lists at query runtime. They are pre-defined in the index and theircontents are refreshed on a regular basis. Bing does run the duplicate removal process at runtime,however, and that may change what’s shown in a categorized results list versus the first five organicresults, depending upon the query. Seasonally-related categorized results content is refreshed at morefrequent intervals.If a categorized results list takes the searcher on a track they want to explore further, clicking either theheading name at the top of the categorized results list or the See more results link at the bottom of thelist will expand the content shown in that categorized result list as a new SERP. Note, however, that theQuick Tabs list stays in place, allowing searchers to easily navigate back or further explore the topic oftheir initial query.Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters 9

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Figure 6. Sample of a categorized results list from a search on the term ―Chicago‖While categorized results are most often lists of URLs to relevant websites, they can also be dedicated torelated vertical content, such as images, videos, and the like.Figure 7. Sample vertical categorized results from a search on the term ―Chicago‖Bing ranks the categorized results lists based on a criteria list of 300+ features and is entity-dependent.For example, not all actors will have the same Quick Tabs/categorized results sets listed, but for improvedconsistency, a basic boilerplate set of categorized results for like content exists when less primaryinformation is available in the index about a particular entity searched within a group.In testing categorized results, Bing determined that the click-through rate of categorized results wasbetter than was the click-through rates of organic search web rankings 6 through 10. This means that theBing SERPs are more efficient in helping searchers find the content they want, and that the loss of organiclistings 6-10 from the default display isn’t as important as are the additions of the new categorized resultsgroups. This reinforces the value of performing SEO on your website to improve your standings incategorized results listings so that you rank better for more generic keyword searches. And at a minimum,an additional, deeper set of results for searchers are only one click away.Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters 10

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Result types improvementsThe Bing team has done a great deal of work beyond just reorganizing the SERP into categorized results.Improvements to the types of results used will help the searcher more quickly engage with the website bywhat is presented on the SERP. A key goal of the team was to provide tools and exploratory links to takethe searcher beyond their initial task and go into secondary tasks (such as checking flight information,tracking package shipping progress, software and document downloads, etc.). Let’s take a look at howresults have changed in Bing.Standard resultsBing presents the results listings in the SERP with three levels of confidence. The level of confidence Binghas in the searcher’s intent determines how it presents a result listing.For a result with a regular level of confidence, Bing presents the standard ―blue link‖ result, which oftenexposes a deep link within a website. This is the same SERP display that most websites get when theyappear.When possible, Bing also presents related information about the result, such as with books or movies,user ratings and links to reviews directly in the caption.Figure 8. A sample, regular confidence result with a deep link, user ratings, and reviews linkBest MatchFor a very high level of confidence, Bing presents the top ranking result in any list as a Best Match. Thisallows Bing to present additional information about the subject of the search. This additional informationcommonly includes displaying customer service phone numbers, surfacing the website’s own internalsearch box control (such as might be found with a major, online retailer), and deep links to typical areasof interest for searchers within the website.Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters 11

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Figure 9. A sample, very high confidence result labeled Best Match containing an internal search controlIn addition to surfacing internal search functions direction in the Best Match listing, Bing also can surfaceother, site-specific special functions of the website (such as text boxes for entering tracking numbers forcargo shipper websites). Note that when using site-specific functions surfaced in Best Match, the result ofthe site-specific function task takes the searcher to the results page on the website rather than surfacingit in the Bing SERP.Figure 10. A sample, very high confidence result labeled Best Match containing a track package controlA website can appear as either a Best Match or a standard result, depending on its relevance to the querymade.Bing allows webmasters to update the information provided in Best Match. If a webmaster wants to add orupdate data to their index entry, such as a relevant phone number for customers (including customerservice numbers for online retailers or reservations numbers for lodging websites), links to coupons ontheir website, XML sitemap, captions and titles for Flash websites, or surface their website’s internalsearch control, they can contact the Bing team through the Bing product support website. Webmasterscan also use the same link to request that Bing block certain information that is typically shown in BestMatch from displaying or even block their website from being listed as Best Match, in which case whenBing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters 12

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their website is listed as the first organic listing and the Bing index has a very high and better level ofconfidence in that query result, the standard Bing result will be shown.Note that internal search boxes or other controls that rely upon session IDs, cookies, or unusualparameters aren’t supported by Bing in Best Match. Also note that because Bing always derives BestMatch algorithmically, webmasters cannot request this ranking.Best Match with no other resultsWhen Bing has an extremely high level of confidence in a query result, it displays the Best Match SERP,where it presents the Best Match listing, and hides the remainder of the other, relevant search resultslistings from view. However, the searcher can click the search for other results containing <querykeyword> link to unhide the other organic results. When relevant to appear, Bing still populates theQuick Tabs and Related Searches lists in Best Match.Figure 11. A sample, extremely high confidence result labeled Best Match with additional results hiddenThe Bing team chooses which sites become Best Match results based on query volume and theirconfidence in when customers are specifically looking for that website. The Bing team will continue toincrease the number of websites included as Best Match going forward.Instant AnswersWhile Instant Answers aren’t new to Bing, their use has been enhanced in Bing. Instant Answers can nowbe found in both the primary organic search results or within a categorized results listing.Instant Answers offer more comprehensive information and richer results than a traditional result. InstantAnswers can provide specific answers to informational queries, such as ―who won the super bowl‖. OtherInstant Answers offer rich media and structured data results, depending on the query, such as ―canonpowershot‖ or ―rihanna‖. Instant Answers are key access points to the deeper vertical experience.Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters 13

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Figure 12. A sample Instant Answer for the query, ―what is the weather in chicago‖Bing also occasionally presents Local instant answers as the Best Match result.Caption improvementsIn addition to creating more useful result types, the Bing team has improved upon the way result captionsare collected and presented. Their key goal for caption improvements was to ensure that searchers aregetting an accurate representation of a website listed in the SERP so they easily find the information theyare seeking.Meeting this goal will help webmasters with a reduction in bandwidth usage by reducing needless bouncesfrom SERPs. Let’s examine how captions have changed in Bing.Document PreviewAnother major new caption improvement feature of Bing is Document Preview. Document Preview allowssearchers to instantly see content derived from the deep link page before going to the website.When a searcher moves the mouse pointer over the caption, the Document Preview icon appears to theright. When the pointer approaches the icon, the Document Preview appears and presents more contentfrom the page.Figure 13. A sample SERP result with Document Preview activeBing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters 14

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Document Preview helps searchers find the content they want faster, without leaving the SERP until theyare ready. Allowing searchers to see a sample of what’s on a page before they go to a website will be anefficiency boon. It will equally benefit webmasters by driving more qualified traffic from higher valuecustomers and minimizing the bounce rate.Bing enables Document Preview by default on standard caption results, except for best matches. Andbecause Bing generates the content in Document Preview algorithmically, webmasters cannot affect itscontent at this time. However, you can choose to disable it for your site.Disable Document Preview for your website’s result in the SERPThe Bing design team took into consideration that some webmasters might not want to expose thecontent of their webpages before a searcher clicks to browse their website. As a result, they’ve allowedwebmasters to disable this feature on a per-page basis or site-wide on their websites. Here’s how:Per pageWebmasters can insert the following <meta> tag within the <head> tags on each HTML page for whichthey want Document Preview disabled.<meta name=“msnbot”, content=“nopreview”>or generically for all bots,<meta name=“robots”, content=“nopreview”>Site-wideFor a site-wide exclusion, or to cover non-HTML pages, such as PDF, Word, PowerPoint, video, or plaintext files, where you cannot insert meta tags and for which you want to disable Document Preview, insertthe following line in your web server’s HTTP header:x-robots-tag: nopreviewBing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters 15

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Data extraction for captionsBing culls the information shown in Document Preview from the body content on the page and elsewhere,not just the page’s meta data. Bing uses intelligent data extraction to display addresses, phone numbers,and email links in Document Preview. Bing will attempt to populate the Document Preview caption for localsearches with the phone number and street address from external sources if the data isn’t available in thewebsite’s pages. Bing can also use data extraction techniques to populate the basic caption’s descriptionsnippet if necessary. Figure 14. A sample Document Preview content using data not found on thereferenced pageMany website designers use Flash and Silverlight-based animations to display their content. Quite oftenthese websites don’t offer any readable meta data text, such as titles and descriptions, in the HTML sourcecode for the search engine bot to crawl. In these cases, it can be very hard for the search engine to derivea useful website description needed to populate the result caption. The Bing team found that websites thatused Flash were responsible for 21 percent of all empty caption descriptions for queries in their index.Bing has implemented new technologies that can perform a limited data extraction from many of theseapplications, and attempts to do so when there is no other available information on the website for fillingin the caption. As a result, Bing has been able to update the website caption data in its index for one thirdof these formerly empty-tagged, Flash-based websites.As an example, Bing’s updated basic caption for a sample Flash-based website is as follows.Figure 15. A sample Bing caption for a Flash-based websiteBing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters 16

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Bing examined the site’s Flash content and extracted the data. Below is the website’s content as shown inFlash.Figure 16. Image of the sample, Flash-based website whose caption is shown in Figure 1.5The actual source code from this site reveals that the data extracted doesn’t appear in the website’ssource code as shown below.Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters 17

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Figure 17. Actual source code for Flash-based website, showing no usable meta or page data from whichto derive a caption descriptionWhen titles and/or meta descriptions don’t exist on an HTML page, at runtime Bing creates a best-effortcaption from relevant external sources of reliable information to populate the caption with meaningful datafor the searcher. Bing, in the effort to improve searcher experience and avoid empty captions, can evenconstruct captions using keyword inbound link text from external, authoritative websites to help createbasic captions where no publisher data exists.Note, however, that the best source for information about a website is always you, the content publisher,so be sure to fill in this information when publishing your pages!Skip Flash intro link in resultBing surfaces the link to Skip flash intro on applicable Flash-based websites to allow searchers to getright into the content of the website.Figure 18. A sample search result for Flash-based website where the ―skip flash intro‖ link is surfacedPage translation link in resultBing enables English language users to access webpages and documents in other languages by providinga translate this page link in the result.Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters 18

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Figure 19. A sample search result of a French webpage with a ―translate this page‖ link in the resultClicking on the translate this page link takes the user to the following webpage.Figure 20. Resulting translation page as offered by BingLocal Listings CenterThe Local Listing Center is the new Bing result for local business searches.Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters 19

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Figure 21. A sample local listings result as a Best MatchClicking the Quick Tab’s listing called Local as well as the Best Match link for Listings near <City,State> brings the searcher to their Local Listings Center.Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters 20

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Figure 22. A sample Local Listings Center webpage when Listings near <City, State> is clickedEnhanced WikipediaBing has added Wikipedia content directly into its index. When Bing shows a Wikipedia result in the SERP,click enhanced view to use this feature. Within the caption for Bing-hosted Wikipedia content are majorsection headers within the content page to help quickly narrow down the content search faster.Bing doesn’t change the content as found in Wikipedia.Figure 23. A sample enhanced Wikipedia resultBing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters 21

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Figure 24. A sample of Bing-hosted Wikipedia contentCrawler changesThere have been no major changes to the MSNBot crawler during the upgrade to Bing. However, the Bingteam is continuously refining and improving our crawling and indexing abilities. Note that the bot namehasn’t changed. It will still show up in the web server access logs as MSNBot. However, we have increasedthe size limit of sitemaps from 10,000 URLs to 50,000 URLs, although the size of the sitemap stillshouldnt be larger than 10 MBs compressed.Webmaster CenterThere have been no major functional changes to the Webmaster Center as part of the Bing release. Accessto the online tools still requires an authentication code. Previous authentication codes acquired throughLive Search remain valid. The name of the file, LiveSearchSiteAuth.xml, used by Live Search to store thatauthentication code at the root of the website, also remains unchanged.Some access points to the features of Webmaster Center have changed with Bing: To access Webmaster Center from the Bing home page: From www.bing.com, click More, and then Webmaster Center. To access Webmaster Center directly from a URL: Go to http://www.bing.com/webmaster/. To access the new home of the Webmaster Center blog: Go to http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/webmaster/. To access the new home of the Webmaster Center forum: Go to http://www.bing.com/community/forums/default.aspx?GroupID=11.Note that the URLs to Webmaster Center online Help topics haven’t changed with the release of Bing.Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters 22

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How does Bing affect my SEO efforts?The new, redesigned SERP is a major step forward in how users will think of and use search. Bing’s newcategorized results surface more content, and more relevant content, more quickly.Because of this new way of thinking about search, some webmasters might initially be concerned that theshortened primary organic listing in the new Bing SERP might render their SEO efforts as less effective.Instead, Bing makes it easier to compete for broad terms because it surfaces more categoriesautomatically, increasing the number of results on the page and generating more relevant content.The most common user intent for common keyword searches are now often presented with Quick Tabsthat present branches of the parent keyword that searchers end up looking for. This surfaces manywebsites that rank highly for those keyword combinations who otherwise wouldn’t surface highly for theparent keyword.If anything, SEO is all the more important as an opportunity to help your website stand out from thecrowd. In fact, well done SEO can expand your opportunities with Bing.The Bing team discovered that the click through rates for items in the categorized results groups werehigher than those results found in positions 6 through 10 of the initial, organic list. Because of this, andthe fact that the new, multi-threaded SERP design surfaces many more pages that will be associated withthe searcher’s primary keywords than would have surfaced in a single-threaded SERP list, webmasters andpublishers will be more likely to have searchers discover their content with the Bing designed SERP thanthey would using the traditional search model SERP.But to take advantage of this added exposure, webmasters will need to focus their attention on solid SEObest practices so that their content bubbles up to the top in the new Quick Tabs/categorized results lists inBing. To further enhance user satisfaction as well as surface even more publishers’ original content, Bingremoves duplicate results from categorized results lists, which allows other, lower ranked pages to beshown in the categorized results on its SERP.What do I need to do for SEO with Bing?All of the benefits from these enhancements are available to websites that invest in SEO. Webmasters canhelp their websites get more visitor traffic by helping Bing best represent their content to searchers in ourSERPs. Webmasters can easily do this by adding unique titles and meta descriptions to each page. Ifwebmasters don’t provide search engines with good, keyword-oriented, well-written caption source data,the resulting captions created by algorithm, no matter how hard we try, won’t represent your website aswell as those websites whose webmasters did provide this unique and important data.The use of consistent data structures between pages on your website (such as placing similar databetween pages using a similar tree structure, similar class names, support standard markup technologies,such as microformats, etc.) will also help improve the effectiveness of our crawler, which puts more ofyour content into our index. Submitting your sitemap to Bing if your website is new, has beensubstantially changed, or has added any new rich media content, is also very helpful. You can submit yoursitemap.xml file via the Sitemap tool in Webmaster Center or directly from your browser’s address bar bytyping the following:http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?sitemap=www.mysite.com/sitemap.xmlBe sure to include the full URL for your website’s sitemap.xml file at the end of this line.Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters 23